an office building, post-production facilities, a hotel, restaurants, theater, visitors center and retail space. Plymouth Rock Studios began receiving considerable regional attention after passing their Plymouth Town Meeting vote in October 2008 and announcing a partnership with MIT Media Lab in November 2008 that was featured in the New York Times. The partnership was described as "a fusion between technology and the arts" that the studio and Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe will come to define Hollywood East as a movement. However, before groundbreaking could begin as planned in late 2009, the state of Massachusetts denied Plymouth Rock's request for $50 million in state funding that would have been used to pay for road and sewer work. Around this same time, the project's co-founders missed the deadline to purchase the Waverly Oaks golf course that occupied the land targeted for studio construction. In a final attempt at funding, Kirkpatrick announced that the project had reached a deal with Prosperity International of Orlando, FL, a company headed by Michael Burgess, to secure $500 million in funding. Plymouth Rock studios gave $3.5 million to Burgess as collateral in return for Burgess promising to secure the loan, however, Burgess never secured the loan and never returned the deposit afterwards. In 2011, Michael Burgess was sentenced to 15 years in prison on 42 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy. Southfield Studios Around the same time that Plymouth Rock Studios was beginning to experience financial difficulties, the Los Angeles based International Studio Group proposed another movie studio to be based in Massachusetts called Southfield Studios. These studios were to be built in Weymouth, Massachusetts on the former naval base there just 12 miles south of Boston. The studios were to cost $147 million and power the 600,000 square feet complex that could host all types of media production companies, including movies, television, video games, live broadcasts, satellite simulcasts, music videos and commercials. However, ground was never broken and today Southfield is home to a residential community. Government incentives Florida For decades, Florida provided considerable tax incentives to attract film production. However, after the 2012 bankruptcy of Digital Domain resulted in the closure of studios largely subsidized by state and local governments, Florida ceased its state film tax incentives program. Massachusetts The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has incentivized the film industry to create projects in Massachusetts through an attractive tax credit law. For film production companies doing